My phone rang the other night. It was a voice recording from one of my local government representatives. The recording said, “Stay on the line if you would like to be added to a live town hall meeting now in progress.” Of course I stayed on the line… partly because I’m an interested citizen but also because as an Internal Communications person, I just love stuff like this. I was fascinated by how easy it all seemed. All I had to do was stay on the line. My representative took the first five minutes to outline his views and then “went to the phone lines” inviting other citizens to call in and ask a questions. Before the hour long session was over, he took a phone poll asking us to rank the most important issues and reported the results immediately. Sure, there were a few hiccups, but overall, I was really impressed. I’m more educated after this call. I feel more connected to people in my community because of this call. My representative came off as a smart, thoughtful guy. And it wasn’t a big leap for me to imagine the value of this tactic as part of a corporate leadership communication strategy. Imagine, the CEO places a phone call and suddenly has a direct line to employees. How powerful could that be!
Has anyone something like this within their company? I’d love to hear about it...
